Monday, June 19, 2017

It don't matter to the moon

It don't matter to the moon
If you're not in my life




Sorry, I like the song but I'd like it better if Stevie Nicks came in sooner.

Don Henley's a great singer and I don't mean to imply that he isn't.

And I do like him (especially the album BUILDING THE PERFECT BEAST).

But I saw that on YOUTUBE and was waiting the whole time for when Stevie came in.  (I'd never seen the video before today -- or heard the song.)


Let's go back to a song that's older than me (though my kids not believe that's possible).  One from my parents day that my sisters and I would act out on some Saturdays -- the one and only Tina Turner doing "River Deep Mountain High."



And I was Tina.

Let's get that clear.

I had the deepest voice.

My two sisters were sopranos.

So when we did Tina, they were back up!  :D

(Yes, my oldest always got to be Diana.  Those are the breaks.)

And here are two Tweets from Margaret Kimberley.


  1. Gabriel was an enslaved man who attempted a slave insurrection in Virginia in 1800. He and many others were executed.
  2. We ended conference walking to Shockoe Bottom. Burial ground, slave trading center.
     



And here's my favorite Tina song from when I was a little girl.




I love it.

I love her vocals, I love the music, I love the rhythm.

A great song.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Monday, June 19, 2017.  The Mosul Slog continues, what is insane and inhumane is accepted as normal, and much more.




Micah Zenko is a public commentator who appears to have compassion -- a rare thing.  But in their chattering to themselves, these talking heads -- even the ones with compassion -- appear to get lost.

No where is that more clear than in his column for THE NEW YORK TIMES entitled "Why Is the US Killing So Many Civilians in Syria and Iraq?" online and "Facing Civilian Casualties" in print.

He goes over the fact that that populated areas are now being bmobed more, he goes over the claims of relaxed guidelines for bombings (and the denial), he goes over Donald Trump's farming out decision making to the military.

It's a hand wringing column.

It's also one where they talk to themselves and accept things as normal which are not, in any way, shape or form, normal.

First off, it is not normal to be dropping bombs in populated areas.

In many cases, that is a War Crime.

Second, note the second sentence:


Also, more strikes have occurred in populated areas, like Mosul, the Islamic State’s last stronghold in Iraq. A 500-pound bomb aimed at two snipers there detonated stored explosives, which collapsed a building and killed 105 Iraqi civilians on March 17, according to Centcom.  

Anyone making it to the end  of that second sentence will read the sotto voiced "according to Centcom," yes.  And that's rather cheesy.

But that's not my point here.

2 snipers.

A five under-pound bomb.

For two snipers.

(For the sake of argument, let's accept that claim that the were two snipers and that they were the target.)

For two snipers -- in a densely populated area -- you drop a 500 pound bomb?

In the dank hall where the chattering faces use their own fingers to pull their deaths masks back into a perverse grin while they speak their own coded language, a 500 pound bomb is seen as normal, something that just is.


There is nothing normal about dropping a 500 pound bomb on populated area.

 Membership in the chattering class requires crushing your own soul.





AFP reports, "Iraqi authorities have dropped leaflets over Mosul warning civilians to stay inside and are telling jihadists to 'surrender or die' after launching an assault to retake the Old City."

Day 243 of The Mosul Slog.

And when it finally ends, the war drags on.



EU considers security mission to help stabilise Iraq after Mosul falls



And US troops will not be leaving.


In other news . . .


Welcome today's landmark visit by PM and accompanying ministerial delegation to .




PM arrived in Saudi Arabia after receiving an official invitation from .


مراسيم استقبال رسمية في مطار الملك عبدالعزيز لدى وصول العبادي



This is big news.  Iraq shares a border (southern border) with Saudi Arabia.  Under Nouri al-Maliki, "diplomacy" with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was making threats and verbal attacks.




New content at THIRD:












Friday, June 16, 2017

Some things I don't understand

  Retweeted
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂



Does he mean Jeff Sessions?

I'm serious here.

Robert Mueller is over the investigation, I thought.

Does he mean Mueller?

I'm confused.


And I'm not trying to be funny, I'm serious.

Know what else I don't get?

The continued push for war on Syria.

All that leftover regime change money has gotta go somewhere. They failed so now they're focused on revisionism



Let's accept for a second that a war is needed (it's not), okay then how about you end the other wars first?

We don't need war.

We don't want it.

There are many things I don't understand but there's two of them.




"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Friday, June 16, 2017.  The Mosul Slog continues, a bishop misses the point, and much more.


It’s Going Down: ICE Arrest 199 Iraqi Christians During Deportation Sweep! [Video]
 
 




"That priest is probably still floating on a fog pillow," wrote Anne Sexton ("The Inventory Of Goodbye"). Bishop Bawai Soro's feet certainly aren't touching the ground.


Reading his column at THE HILL, it's hard to figure out whether he's stupid or dishonest?


ISIS is more in the news than the Iraqi government so he may be using them -- and lies -- to make a case.  If so, it may attract more eyeballs for being 'trendy' but it will also attract many eyeballs from the heads of people who get that Soro doesn't know what the hell he's writing about.


ICE and US President Donald Trump must not return Iraqi Christians to Iraq, he argues, because the will face the Islamic State.


The Islamic State?


Forget the corporate spin that the Islamic State is on the run, the problem for Iraqi Christians throughout the Iraq War has not been the Islamic State.

Yes, they've been victimized in the rare areas of Iraq that the Islamic State has grabbed control of in the last few years.

But stop pretending that's it.

The Iraqi government has failed them and has persecuted them.

They have passed laws against them, the forces have raided their bars and establishments to shut them down even when the law wasn't on the Iraqi forces' side.


The Islamic State is a recent thing in the long war.  It will likely be replaced by something else.

The same can't be said of the Iraqi government where thug Nouri al-Maliki was replaced by thug-lite Hayder al-Abadi.

The exodus of Iraqi Christians from Iraq begins long before the emergence of the Islamic State (as did the relocating to northern Iraq from Baghdad).

Is the Bishop a liar or just stupid?

And the argument to make, pay attention here, against deporting the group back to Iraq is that the Iraqi government has not only failed to protect them, the Iraqi government has taken part in attacking them.

The Iraqi government's history since the 2003 US-led invasion is one of persecuting religious minorities -- this includes Christians.

So why would you force Christians to return to that country?

That's the argument you make.

You rest it instead on the Islamic State?

The minute The Mosul Slog finally wraps up, people shrug and say, "Well they're over, no reason the Christians can't be sent back now."

The Bishop had a column to make a case and he didn't.

Instead, he's put out the highly damaging notion that, were it not for the Islamic State, Iraq would be a fine place for Iraqi Christians to live.


But the Islamic State did not run them off from Baghdad.

It wasn't the Islamic State, either, that reduced Baghdad's Jewish population to one elderly person.



Day 240 of The Mosul Slog.

map update. Green= completely liberated. Orange= frontline clashes. White= control.
 
 



End of ISIS: U.S. and Iraqi Forces Prepare for Final Battle After Surrounding Old City
 
 




End coming?

Good, because it's already been 240 days.


Though the operation to liberate or 'liberate' Mousl was only launched in October, Mosul was seized
by ISIS in June 2014.

Nouri al-Maliki was prime minister then.

Some have not forgotten that fact.

G.H. Renaud (KURDISTAN 24) reports:

Demonstrators called for Maliki to face justice as they marked the third anniversary of the Speicher massacre where Islamic State (IS) militants killed hundreds of students at the Air Force base near Tikrit.
[. . .]
Banners listed the three “plagues” demonstrators believe Maliki is responsible for: the fall of Mosul, the Speicher Massacre, and the squandering of Iraq’s money.


Nouri and Moqtada al-Sadr are squaring off for upcoming elections -- whenever they might be held.

Provincial elections were actually supposed to take place in April.

They have been delayed until September but there's also a proposal to combine them with next year's national elections.





The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley -- updated:


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